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The Weill Cornell Pediatric Brain and Spine Center at Weill Cornell Medical College has announced the creation a new brain tumor research fellowship, funded by the Ty Louis Campbell Foundation.

The Ty Louis Campbell Fellow will join the research team at the Children’s Brain Tumor Project, led by Co-Directors Dr. Mark Souweidane and Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield, who are investigating novel approaches to treating inoperable pediatric brain tumors such as DIPG, gliomatosis cerebri, and atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor (AT/RT). The Fellowship will be named for Ty Campbell, a patient of Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield who died in 2012 at age 5 after battling AT/RT for two years.

The Ty Louis Campbell Fellowship is a two-year $130,000 grant to support Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield’s research in precision medicine to genomically sequence these inoperable tumors to identify the best treatment approaches for each patient.

“I’m so grateful to the Ty Louis Campbell Foundation for this generous gift,” says Dr. Greenfield. “We are making good progress in understanding incurable pediatric brain tumors, but our greatest need is for advanced data analysis .The TLC Fellow will be focused on bioinformatics, to help us understand a large amount of new data to inform and accelerate our research goal to find cures.”

The Children’s Brain Tumor Project brings the advances of precision medicine together with Convection Enhanced Delivery (CED), an innovative delivery method to attack the tumor site while minimizing toxicity to surrounding healthy cells. Dr. Souweidane is currently conducting a clinical trial testing the safety of this methodology for DIPG.

“When Ty was in treatment,” says Cindy Campbell, Ty’s mother, “We were always impressed with Dr. Greenfield’s involvement in his care, both as a neurosurgeon and as a researcher who generously shared his knowledge and ideas on possible treatment options.” Adds Lou Campbell, Ty’s father, “We felt that Dr. Greenfield’s pioneering research deserved our support to ensure that the momentum he has spearheaded to find a cure continues.”

The Ty Louis Campbell Fellow is expected to join the research team effective July 1, 2014. For more information on the new fellowship, see Weill Cornell Newsroom.